I'm better organised now for a, well I'd like to say plastic free lifestyle, but that still seems impossible, and not necessarily practical nor desirable given how much I rely on computers etc in my life. I've just got home from being the cook/camp parent at our Junior Young Friends Camp, and trying to carry the kaupapa of PFJ with me through that event was certainly a challenge. It meant that I travelled down to Waiheke Island with a LOT more stuff than I'd normally take. Partly this was due to having been clearing out a neighbour's house and thus kitchen cupboards after she went into hospital/care/funeral parlour in rapid succession (the main reason why everything non-essential went out the window this month). Unopened packets etc could go to the foodbank but not started ones, so I turned up at camp with some of the 'shopping' done already. I also turned up with an apron, waxed food wraps, various tubs (full of aforementioned 'shopping' for travel, but packed to use for leftovers/storage once there), fly nets to cast over prepared food sitting waiting, net bags for buying fruit & veg, a skooshy bottle for diy surface cleaner, a shopping trolley and several cloth shopping bags. Oh and an easy-yo maker! Yes buying packets of easy-yo means adding to the non-recyclable plastic rather than reducing it, but it also makes a big difference to the budget and you have to pick your battles...
Due to having to reorganize the timetable at short notice Peter and I whisked up a fill-in session one day where I explained to them the PFJ journey I was on, and then as I disappeared back into the kitchen to get lunch ready Peter got them thinking about how things were in their own homes/lives and what they might be able to change. How much that session will influence their thinking and actions over the coming years remains to be seen, given the amount of junk food they stocked up on for an all-nighter on the last night suggests that they aren't quite ready to embrace it fully yet, but I was asked for the flapjack recipe I'd used as apparently it tasted better than the bought bars and those were nearly all 'just air' in the packets anyway. Every step counts though, and I can hardly expect a bunch of teenagers to rush to embrace something that has taken me until my mid 40s to be proactive about!
One huge bonus of thinking in terms of PFJ when planning the menus and doing the shopping for JYF Camp was that I ended up feeding them for around $10 per day in the end (allowing for the free food that I took and was donated by local Friends), which was way under budget. I didn't take a photo of the non-recyclable plastic laid out, but this is the sum total of non-recyclable plastic created by the kitchen over 5 days of camp on Waiheke (the mug is there for scale!) Most of it is cheese wrappers and easy-yo packets...
....and there wasn't much to add to that from the couple of days we had at Mt Eden, leastways not from the food I provided - the sushi in plastic cartons with soy sauce sachets we got for lunch at St Cuthbert's when we joined Yearly Meeting was something of a fly in the ointment. Two f/Friends at YM also doing the PFJ challenge very diligently kept their cartons to take home for their dilemma bags, but I decided a mental note of it would suffice. Unfortunately unlike in Kaitaia plastic bags can't be recycled in Auckland, so the unused breadbags etc that I'd been saving for the packed lunches on the last day did make up a breadbags worth of additional landfill. I did consider bringing them home to recycle but my luggage was already stuffed full of leftover ingredients I bought off the Camp. By that point I was so tired I totally forgot to take a photo of the bag collection.
Like the fairly self-sufficient lifestyle we saw at the Eco Village of Awa Awa Roa, cooking almost everything from scratch is very labour intensive, but it is also very rewarding. It took me working full time in the kitchen plus several hours of help a day to keep an average of 22 people fed throughout the days we were on Waiheke. It's certainly not something I could do for longer stretches of time, and I did decided to pass when given the opportunity to do it all again next year. But I'm really glad I did it. Not only did I prove to myself that I could, in terms of energy as well as keeping the kaupapa going, but also providing food that was close enough to my usual diet not to matter in addition to keeping a bunch of hungry teens satisfied. Plus I proved that one can provide such food on a low budget. Admittedly using the local wholesalers for dried fruit, nusts/seeds and pulses made a big difference and buying in bulk is tricky for those on a limited income each week, but it isn't impossible.
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